It's not their responsibility because they didn't create the population imbalance. It's not Blizzards fault that people wants to play on certain realms because certain guilds happen to play on those servers. That was what created the imbalance to begin with. Fanboys migrated/rerolled on the servers the top guilds played on because they wanted to stand in OG/IF and admire their heroes.

Yet they had all the power to do anything about it. So yeah its totally their responsibility. They could have blocked transfers to these realms. They could have done ANYTHING. But they milked the transfer fee instead.

Originally Posted by Everything Nice

I've always found it difficult to respect any man who doesn't wrap his peeper around his waist and wear it as a belt.

Originally Posted by Benjamin Rush

...did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.”

What "powerlevel" are the (quest-)mobs on the timeless isle? About the dread waste level ~390hp, golden lotus daily ~500hp or thunder isle with even bigger numbers?
Just asking because I don't have ptr access atm and I think of leveling an alt + gearing him up. If it's harder I might have to force myself into t14 LFR again before going to the timeless island D:

Most people that work and have somewhat of a degree make more than 300 eur a week.

So If you say it's expensive, while you don't work, then you need to get a job.

Unless ur a kid then find a summer job, it's not like it's that expensive.

You can have a job and still not have a large amount of disposable income, it varies from occupation, to living area, to how much that person actually values a character transfer. For a good amount of the players who are in their late teens or early twenties £15 each to virtually move your characters to la-la land isn't an option when the money is needed for gas, food, bills, rent, and other things that aren't WoW.

Apparently they do since those servers saw a crazy increase in player numbers even before you could transfer characters. People were actually willing to reroll just to get close to their idols.

And about new servers that opened up when TBC launched, people were begging blizzard to open fresh servers all the time during vanilla. And blizzard didn't force people to roll a char on a fresh server.

What's with the Blizzard didn't "force" people to play on a new server? Did I imply coercion was somehow involved?
No, Blizzard opened up a crapton of new servers during TBC which was also the period with the most amount of new players who were suggested through in game prompts to roll in these new servers, most of which are the very servers languishing today.
And even if it were players flocking to certain realms to follow certain guilds (strange how the most populated realms are not those with the more high profile players and guilds though,eh?) at what point does a company sitting back and doing nothing absolve them of any responsibility for a situation?
But this thread has been derailed enough and you clearly don't have a problem (even though laughably Blizzard does) with the current low pop realm situation.

Population imbalance is not really the same thing as a bug though. The game still works perfectly fine, it's the players that has moved on to other servers.

Well I guess thats semantics. With a game with a massively online playerbase, player behaviour that is not anticipated could be considered a bug. If Blizzard didn't anticipate that people would rather play on the most populated servers they have, then thats not the players fault. Same as some "bugs" in other games were caused by the exploration of the game by its players. They only occur because players did something the devs didn't anticipate them doing (getting outside the maps etc.).

As I said before, Blizzard had all the cards in the deck for fixing this issue, but rather than consider as much of the player base as possible they looked at the income from server transfers and said "You know what, lets stick with whats going on for now". 3 years down the line, and 80% of the servers are pretty much 'unplayable' WHEN COMPARED to the more populous ones. Hence you seeming to think pugging 12/12 normal and some heroic bosses is perfectly doable. Whereas the majority of players will claim that you have to be in a guild to access normal modes in Mists of Pandaria. For the majority of servers NOBODY PuGs normal modes. Because the servers are dead. Because Blizzard did NOTHING in however many years they could have to do anything to stop them dying except wring their hands and tell us "we're working on a solution" while all around you your server gets more dead, as people either leave the game because fucked if they pay Blizzard any MORE money ontop of what they already pay them, or transfer to Stormrage or Draenor, or whatever the populated servers in NA are called.

EDIT for clarification: In my mind the issue of server imbalance has been evident since the end of TBC. It has been a PROBLEM for servers since the start of Cataclysm and the return of "not Wrath-style raiding ease". So if Blizzard had acted to prevent it, or had monitored it even remotely closely, this issue wouldn't be happening now. And in my mind they've had about 7 years to start doign something about it.

Last edited by AeneasBK; 2013-08-31 at 03:13 PM.

Originally Posted by Everything Nice

I've always found it difficult to respect any man who doesn't wrap his peeper around his waist and wear it as a belt.

Originally Posted by Benjamin Rush

...did we not know that the human mind seldom arrives at truth upon any subject till it has first reached the extremity of error.”

For a good amount of the players who are in their late teens or early twenties £15 each to virtually move your characters to la-la land isn't an option when the money is needed for gas, food, bills, rent, and other things that aren't WoW.

Or... dare I say... people have 15 euros but perhaps they want to save some of that for contingency (you know, in case more expenses happen, in case Blizzard ups the sub fee, in case they may be forced to race change since their guild did due to shit racials, etc.)

Point is these internet posters here have no place telling others how to spend their money, the only constants here are that 1) servers are dying largely due to Blizzard's unwillingness to make the game alt-friendly and unwillingness to remove bad racials, etc., and 2) Blizzard bilks people money for faction and race transfers and doesn't even offer a discount if you do both.

People can go with the flow (like the ones who still play here) did, or people can quit, but the bottom line is both anecdotal and numbers/statistical evidence show more and more people are choosing the latter option.

Again better late than never, but if I see even fucking half of a 5.0 grind in 6.0, I'm out until Blizzard finally gets their heads out of their asses (again) and puts the needed catch-up, grind-reducing mechanics in. And if they don't? So be it.

Bullshit. I've been doing heroic scenarios and running LFR constantly and i'm sitting on 511 on my mage and 510 on my prot pala. How the hell would you even be able to get 530 ilv without having luck? I barely get items from HC scenarios or LFR, so saying that i'm doing something wrong isn't really all that helpful when i'm doing all i can.

Again better late than never, but if I see even fucking half of a 5.0 grind in 6.0, I'm out until Blizzard finally gets their heads out of their asses (again) and puts the needed catch-up, grind-reducing mechanics in. And if they don't? So be it.

The rep was fine, people just need to learn that RPGs are about working for your rewards.

The rep was fine, people just need to learn that RPGs are about working for your rewards.

Or RPG's need to learn that they aren't jobs and people aren't slaves and have unlimited time? The rep was far from fine. Let's not be stupid. We can delude ourselves as much as we want and blame Asia as much as we want but anyone with half a working brain would know that massive subscription drops were from over-gating content and both alt and main unfriendliness.

Blizzard went way the fuck overboard and are now reversing course too little, too late. You don't make mains require a lot of time and make alts require a lot of time (hint: what developers didn't realize, if you make mains require a lot of time that alone is enough to prevent "8 alt syndrome").

And again it doesn't matter how much you, or I, personally, are able to "cope" with the shitty MMO setup. If my RealID disappears or my current guild disbands (I have guild hopped for a good chunk of my WoW time and do not plan on doing so more), I'm done regardless of how "easy" I find their "requirement" to "cope" with.

---

Regarding 5.0, obviously the damage is done, the subscription losses came, decimated the population, wrecked the community, shut down entire servers, and left. As I mentioned earlier, "better late than never."

The main concern is that Blizzard then decides OH HUEHUEHUE LET'S MAKE A GRIND AGAIN for 6.0.

^ He is talking about alts for actual raid groups, with VP rewards and 522 from normal mode that can be upgraded, 530 isnt that big of a deal.

It's not possible to get ilvl530 without being in normal raids. That includes fully upgraded 522s from VP and all upgraded 502s in the non-522 slots.

On several servers, it is pretty difficult to get into a pug without Ahead of the Curve already. Including Mal'ganis, which has a humongous Horde population but very rarely current pugs that aren't gated by achievements or higher ilvl.